Learning On the Job

Administrators in San Francisco got a shock recently when they took
inventory of the school system's professional-development offerings.
They discovered that the district is spending close to $18 million a
year on a plethora of programs and projects--a figure that had never
before been tallied.

"We were just overwhelmed," said Karen Levine, a policy analyst who
helped study the district's professional-development spending. "Now we
have a good sense of how many programs there are and how little
coordination there seems to be."

The San Francisco findings are not unusual. Researchers have found
that many urban districts lack a coordinated, strategic plan for
helping teachers and administrators learn on the job.

But without such high-quality professional development, the push to
replicate effective reform strategies on a large scale could well be
doomed.

"One of the biggest hurdles between reform and schools as they are
now is professional development," said Marla Ucelli, the assistant
director of the Rockefeller Foundation's school-reform program. (See
related story.)

The foundation last year launched a project to help urban districts
build an "infrastructure" to support the kind of professional
development that improves student achievement.

That means making continuous learning part of educators' regular
work lives: Teachers and administrators need time for inquiry,
analysis, and reflection with their peers, foundation officials said,
as well as time to add to their skills and knowledge.

"There isn't a culture that supports ongoing learning for adults,"
said Victor C. Young, who is overseeing the Rockefeller project. "In
the best scenarios, it's a healthy ancillary. In the worst, it doesn't
exist."

Governance Structures

The foundation last year gave $15,000 planning grants to 10
districts--Albuquerque, N.M.; Denver; El Paso; Flint, Mich.; Fort
Worth; Greenville, S.C.; Pittsburgh; San Antonio; San Diego; and San
Francisco--that agreed to rethink their approaches to professional
development.

They are expected to devise a governance structure that will pull
together and focus professional development, enlarging on successful
programs and discarding unsuccessful ones.

This spring, the foundation will give three districts with the most
promising ideas money to spend 18 months refining their plans.

At the end of that time, if foundation officials believe the
districts' work looks worthwhile, the efforts of the three districts
will be supported with an additional $300,000 to $500,000 for each of
five to seven more years.

The new infrastructure is expected to serve both the majority of
teachers in the district and to equip administrators and school board
members with the knowledge they need to support school-based
improvement.

Eventually, districts will be expected to rethink how
money--including state and federal aid--is allocated for professional
development. They also will be asked to look at creating incentives for
educators to participate.

The time span for the project is long out of necessity, Ms. Ucelli
said, because the barriers to effective professional development are
formidable. They include finding enough time and money, enlisting
community support for teachers to spend time outside the classroom,
defining the content of professional development, and getting past turf
battles over providing it.

"We're trying to figure out whether it's even possible to build
adult learning into the daily lives of school districts," Ms. Ucelli
said. "We don't know the answer in this country."

Community Involvement

The districts were required to involve a broad spectrum of their
communities in the discussions of professional development because
making educators' learning a high priority will require changes the
entire community must support. And the governance plans they put
together must include people outside the school district.

As a first step, the districts have taken inventories of their
existing professional-development offerings. Some have decided to build
on current practices or district goals, while others have turned to
their communities for advice.

In Greenville, S.C., people have discovered that what is expected of
teachers must change, said Elizabeth(See educational leadership.

"We make these opportunities available," she said of the district's
professional-development programs, "but sometimes there isn't the
expectation that teachers will participate and then go back into the
classroom to make appropriate changes."

In Greenville, efforts to set standards for students, teachers, and
schools are expected to guide professional-development discussions.

The San Antonio school district, meanwhile, plans to invite city
residents to reflect on their most powerful learning experiences.

Diana Lam, the superintendent, said the district hopes to replicate
these kinds of experiences in its professional-development
programs.

'Subtle Issues'

Several districts are talking about how technology could be used to
improve professional development. Ms. Levine, the San Francisco policy
analyst, said teachers could benefit from an on-line bulletin board
that would let them know about programs.

"We're looking not so much at programs and more at how the system
for delivery is working or not," she said. "We have a lot of strong
national models here, and one of the things we're finding is that it's
overwhelming for a lot of people, how much is going on."

In Denver, planners are thinking about creating a "tactical unit"
that can focus on helping teachers improve students' reading and
writing skills.

The focus on literacy, said Barbara Volpe, the executive director of
the Public Education Coalition in Denver, grew out of Superintendent
Irv Moskowitz's goals for the district.

Denver, like other districts that have taken a hard look at
themselves, found that its professional-development programs are
uneven. Teachers generally lack an efficient way to find out about
activities, Ms. Volpe said, and many programs are not connected to the
district's goals or to specific outcomes for students.

"We have to do a lot of thinking about subtle issues of culture,"
she said. "We have to move from a culture that isn't a problem-solving,
learning culture to one that is."

Thinking about finding time for professional development is
complicated by the teachers' contract and by state laws governing how
much time teachers must spend with students, Ms. Volpe noted. But
Colorado also has developed academic standards for students and has
overhauled licensing requirements for educators, which provide a "great
opportunity" to rethink professional development, she added.

Teacher Conversations

Moving away from time-honored practices is difficult, district
officials warn.

Fort Worth's team wants to build on the success of two schools that
use a project-based curriculum. Teachers in those schools come together
regularly to discuss samples of students' work.

"We have to buy time for teachers to reflect on what they know,"
Sally Hampton, a Fort Worth administrator, said, "and make it possible
for them to share it with other people."

Because urban districts suffer such leadership turnover, she added,
it makes sense for them to lodge professional-development expertise in
networks of teachers.

These conversations, however, are a big departure from the
traditional workshops that have predominated in Texas schools. It can
be difficult to build support for these professional discussions, Ms.
Hampton said.

"If an administrator walks in and sees that, they want to know where
are the overheads and handouts," she said. "That's business as
usual."

The Rockefeller Foundation has linked the 10 districts participating
in the project in the Learning Communities Network, a nonprofit
organization that will gather and disseminate the districts'
findings.

Even if their school systems are not chosen for the final round of
grants, many district officials said they plan to continue focusing on
professional development.

"We want to continue with the momentum," Ms. Lam of San Antonio
said. "We have started, and there's no stopping."

The "Scaling Up" series is underwritten by a grant from the Pew
Charitable Trusts.

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